UPDATE

There is an existing theme that is very similar to the Dark room theme, available for Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron.

Check it out, Shiki-colors.

Good news, as the next release of Ubuntu (8.10) is going to be packaged with an optional theme to please the eyes. The default theme will still be the bright and orangy “Human” theme, with a few updates.. but you will be able to select the “Dark room” theme in System > Preferences > Appearance.

via [lifehacker]

For the last month or so I’ve been using the GL Matrix screensaver built into Gnome as my desktop background, and I’m probably not ever going back to a standard background. Other then the fact that it only takes up 10~15 megabytes to run, it doubles as a screensaver. Finding good 1680×1050 backgrounds isn’t an easy task either..

At any rate, if you would like to use the GL Matrix screensaver as your background you must first disable the nautilus desktop:

gconftool-2 --type bool --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop false

Now let’s make the desktop entry for our xserver autostart:

gedit ~/.config/autostart/glmatrix.desktop

Just paste the following into your editor and then save it:

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=No name
Name[en_IN]=Desktop matrix
Exec=/usr/lib/xscreensaver/glmatrix -root
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true

Once you have done that, restart Gnome by hitting Ctrl+Alt+Backspace.

Going back to the original nautlius desktop is simple:

gconftool-2 --type bool --set /apps/nautlius/preferences/show_desktop true && nautilus

Be sure to grab this package, if you’re doing any major PHP development on your Ubuntu box.

Running PHP interactively is a fun and productive way to debug and test out your applications code without having to refresh your browser every time you make a change.

Besides having to install the package, you have to add the -a flag to /usr/bin/php under the terminal.

/usr/bin/php -a

It’s that simple. You can use absolute paths when including files, or cd into your applications directory and begin relatively including your code base.

While you could technically run your entire application under the interactive console, I would highly discern anyone from doing so. I recommend you just include the current file you are testing and work out any bugs one at a time.

I know a lot of developers are using and writing their own test modules to debug their code for them, but I prefer to be face-to-face with my code when I’m testing. You start to build a familiarity with your code in doing so and finding better ways to do things when you’re dealing with it personally. After all you’re going to be the one documenting and interfacing with the code, be one with the code.